Federal board hears testimony on CN discrepancies

The three members of the
U.S. Surface Transportation Board expressed disappointment with Canadian
National Railway Co. officials at last week's hearing regarding discrepancies
in the company's reporting of blocked crossings on the Elgin, Eastern &
Joliet Railroad, the Barrington, Ill., Courier Review reports. The hearing was
held after an independent audit discovered there were 1,457 incidents of
railroad crossings being blocked for 10 minutes or more by trains on the
EJ&E in November and December 2009. CN reported to the transportation board
that there were only 14 incidents.

Board Chairman Daniel
Elliott III said the discrepancies were a "troublesome failure by CN to be
entirely forthcoming. When carriers believe they can decide what information to
reveal and what to conceal, it undermines the integrity of the entire process."

The board did not take
action but Commissioner Charles Nottingham suggested that the board should
extend the oversight period of CN by a year.

"At the least I feel
like we've lost a year of doing the kind of robust oversight that I envisioned
when we started this project," Nottingham said.

CN special advisor Gordon
Trafton was apologetic about the miscommunication and said CN officials
believed they were only required to report instances where crossings were
blocked for 10 minutes or longer due to stopped trains.

Elliott said federal board
staff had expressed to CN officials throughout the process that they were
interested in monitoring all crossing blockages of 10 or more minutes,
including those that were caused by slow-moving trains.

U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean,
D-8th, of Barrington, attended the hearing and blasted CN for its "pattern
of disregard for our laws and indifference toward our communities. For
communication to work, there has to be trust. Sadly, so far CN's promises to
work with communities in good faith and keep their commitments have proven
false."

Karen Darch, Barrington
village president and co-chair of The Regional Answer to Canadian National
(TRAC) coalition, traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the hearing.

"It was encouraging in
that the efforts that TRAC and the citizens have made by submitting comments
was acknowledged," she said.

Last November the coalition
petitioned the federal board to conduct an independent audit of CN's reporting
of blocked crossings. The federal board assigned the task to HDR, Inc., which
discovered that many of the crossings were outfitted with devices that automatically
collect data about the length of time the crossing gates have been down. The
company used this equipment to discover the 1,400-plus blockages of 10 minutes
or longer.

Trafton said CN did not discover
this equipment until April 2009 and, at the time, were not familiar enough with
its capabilities to use it in the reports to the federal board.

"Throughout the middle
of the year we were still, if you will, trying to understand the data and what
some of the limitations are," Trafton said.

He said CN's failure to
alert the federal board that the equipment existed was not an intentional
omission.

The federal board
commissioners were not convinced.

"If we hadn't done
this oversight, I hazard to guess how many more months or years would have
drifted by where we would have been oblivious to the existence of this very
real and meaningful data," Nottingham said.

The federal board could
make a ruling on extending the oversight period or other ramifications for CN
by early June.